Tag Archives: mems

One thing (of many) that connects me and the hubby together is our unwavering love of all things french. We love the cheese, the wine and our constant battle at learning the language. A battle we plan on winning since we fully plan on someday – before some random guy throws dirt on us (well, on him since I plan on being cremated) – that we will have lived in France. And to live in France, we want to be fluent french speakers.

Which is why when Burs read an article in the Guardian about this new language learning site, he had to check it out. At http://www.memrise.com, they’ve created a fun and helpful way to learn any number of languages; by creating mems or mnemonics, which are either sayings or pictures that will help the new words be less forgetful. Then the site will constantly test you on those words which, should help, make them less likely to be forgotten.

I’m nearly always a sceptic about these sorts of things but Burs’ excitedness can be infectious. And what do I have to loose by participating . After all, I’ve studied it in school, had it spoken to me at home, have spent time on flashcards, used Rosetta Stone and even hired a private tutor – I can add one more thing to my vast mountain of me trying to become fluent in french.

So Burs and I signed-up for the 1000 word challenge.

People, I’m already 150 words in and don’t now how people do this. Thing is the first 50 were words I already knew – faire, avoir, être, dans, ici, manger. Easy peasy. Then the program through words at me like le pintade (guinea fowl) and les cuisses de grenouille (frog legs), which are 1) things I will never eat 2) which then makes them hard to remember. Or words that prove to me how little I know of french because I have 850 more to learn. How in the world will I retain that is beyond me but am a bit excited at the dusting off of cobwebs in my brain. It hasn’t been this active in ages (as far as learning something new that is).

I highly recommend Memrise. I cannot implore enough people to get on it! We should all, at the very least, be bilingual. Souhaitez-moi la chance!

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